Impermanence is one of the essential doctrines and a part of three marks o existence in Buddhism. Asserting that all conditioned existence is transient, evanescent, and inconstant, impermanence is a concept found in various aspects of Hinduism and Jainism. Here is a look at some of the best quotes about impermanence.
“A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.”
“A ruin is not just something that happened long ago to someone else; its history is that of us all, the transience of power, of ideas, of all human endeavors.”
“All conditioned things are impermanent – when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”
“Be present, from moment to moment, right in the middle of the real stream of time. That gives you spiritual security. That is why in Buddhism we don’t try to escape from impermanence; we face time itself in our daily living.”
“Breathe and you dwell in the here and now, breath and you see impermanence is life.”
“By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent.”
“Healing and positive life change comes from having the courage and spiritual conviction to look squarely at life’s impermanence.”
“How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence…”
“If we are not empty, we become a block of matter. We cannot breathe, we cannot think. To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and to breathe out.”
“Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.”
“Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It’s the evolution, a never-ending horizon.”
“Impermanence is the law of the universe.”
“Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.”
“In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process.”
“In the face of impermanence, if your next thought is good, this is what we call the realization body.”
“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”
“Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?”
“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”
“It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.”
“Leaving the people and places you love, is a reminder of the impermanence of this life. And the permanence of the next.”
“Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.”
“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”
“Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”
“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.”
“Nothing is right and nothing is just; We sow in ashes and reap in dust.”
“Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.”
“One day some people came to the master and asked: How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness or death?”
“One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”
“Our lives are written in disappearing ink.”
“Realizing that I can’t control or change the impermanence of things in human life is daunting.”
“Take the goods the gods provide, and don’t stand and sulk when they are snatched away.”
“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”
“The impermanence of the universe is manifest, inescapable. I know that, yet I am immoderately attached to this life, these pleasures, this place.”
“The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.”
“The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.”
“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many summer dies the swan.”
“Then again, if the plant is slow growing, and you are getting older, you may want to start with a larger plant. I find myself buying larger plants each year.”
“There are no secrets.It’s just we thought that they said dead. When they said bread.”
“There is no such thing as permanence at all. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is in a flux. Because you cannot face the impermanence of all relationships, you invent sentiments, romance, and dramatic emotions to give them certainty.”
“There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change.”
“We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.”
“What yoga philosophy and all the great Buddhist teachings tells us is that solidity is a creation of the ordinary mind and that there never was anything permanent to begin with that we could hold on to.”
“You’re already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
There are various ways to understand how impermanence will change your life.
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